Treble Entendre
by AngelCeleste85
Summary: Christine finally understands many meanings in the MOTN song. Anyone catch the pun yet? If you do, let me know, but R&R anyway.


Disclaimer: If I owned the Phantom of the Opera I'd have better things to do with my time, his and yours than write these stories. 0;-D Gotta love phangirls.  
  
Other Notes: Speaking of "The Music of the Night," that's precisely what this story is about! The entire song is loaded with meaning on multiple levels, it really was masterfully written. You'll see what I mean in a minute. And I mean to go out of order on the lyrics to MOTN, because they're pieces of a puzzle and Christine is fitting them together.  
  
// Christine's thoughts // [[ Erik's thoughts ]]  
  
Setting: The graveyard at Perros, a year after the end of ALW's version. MUCH USE OF ARTISTIC LICENSE ON THE GRAVEYARD SCENE! ::waves her blank paper around once again:: There, just wanted to make sure you understood that, I'm blending ALW and Leroux again.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"Treble Entendre"  
  
by AngelCeleste85  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Christine's long white nightgown caught the moon's light and shone around her slender form as it billowed a little in the breeze. It didn't matter, nobody was here to see her and she couldn't sleep. It was a warm summer night, warm enough that she'd left even her dressing gown behind when she slipped out of bed and out of the room that resounded with snores behind her.  
  
What she was doing was scandalous, she could just imagine what the newspapers in Paris would make of the story that the Comtess de Chagny walk walking around a graveyard in her nightgown, but it was stifling in the room she shared with her husband. And the all of memory was just too strong.  
  
Her mind drifted back to the last time she had come here. Raoul had been here then, as well, though she had not asked for him. She had come to say farewell to her father, and her Angel of Music had been there as well. He sang to her, played the violin for her like her father once had - even now, she could hear the notes of "The Resurrection of Lazarus" pulling her closer, step by step, to the grave on the north-facing slope.  
  
Behind her, the English Channel rippled like fine black watered silk under the silver-white rays of the moon. Christine bit back an oath she had learned from her husband as she trod unexpectedly on a thorn or bramble of some kind, but she was there at her father's grave a few steps later.  
  
It looked just the way she remembered it - had she expected it to look different? There here Angel had stood, playing the violin with his cloak pushed back behind him just like her father used to, the warm black wool he'd so often draped over her shoulders on those long and yet too-short journeys down into the bowels of the Opera House left to flutter loosely in the wind. Off to the right stood the church that Raoul had dragged her behind as he broke the spell woven by her Angel's haunting voice.  
  
But there was nobody there now, and the only notes that drifted on the lonesome wind were the notes it whistled and rattled in the arms of the small bushes dotted around and over the graves.  
  
Was that when Raoul had broken her heart, as well?  
  
Had it been less than two years since she had been here? Only a year since her marriage to the new Count?  
  
How could things have gone so wrong between herself and Raoul in so short a time?  
  
What was it her Angel had sung to her, when he laid down the violin and before Raoul had intruded, turned a scene of haunting beauty into a scene of horror?  
  
"Wandering child, so lost, so helpless..." Yes, that was it, and that was how she felt. The former singer's lips formed the words, but her voice would not touch the pitches quite right. Raoul had been so angry at the thought of her continuing to sing that she had never brought it up again after that one tempestuous incident. It was the one time he'd ever struck her and he seemed as shocked by it as Christine had been. She could sing still, it was something that would always be part of a former opera star, but all that Erik had taught her was almost forgotten and she had not sung in that entire year.  
  
But their marriage had been decaying for some time now. Christine remembered how lost and afraid she had been then, alone in the world, torn between an enigmatic and frightening man with the demon's face and angelic voice, and the handsome young man who had given her his heart to wear alongside his ring on the chain at her throat. The same chain that her strange Angel with the face that belonged in hell had ripped away, his voice harsh and strident, discordant, jangling her nerves. Had he, in that symbolic gesture, then torn away her affection for Raoul as well?  
  
No, Christine knew in a moment of truth. She had never had the affection for him that should have been there in a wife for a husband. He had been her golden boy, her savior, a rock for her to cling to in the midst of emotions she did not understand and currents she could not hope to navigate safely, or so she had thought.  
  
But as it turned out, he was only the center of a whirlpool that was dragging her down.  
  
Christine did not wish ill towards Raoul de Chagny. She still loved him, she always had... just not as a wife should. He was more of an elder brother in her eyes. How it had surprised her on the night of their wedding, to see the same dark, undefineable emotion in Raoul's eyes that she had seen in Erik's, but raw and undisguised. A lesson that had been, and a hard one for all that Raoul tried to be gentle. A gentleman he was to the bone, but gentle his touch was not. She bore it as a lady was expected to, but took no pleasure in it.  
  
That had been her first understanding of the music of the night, and Christine wondered now if her initiation had come from the wrong man.  
  
"Christine, Christine..." she heard the wind whisper as it caressed her ear. She shivered, it was as though Erik's ghost spoke out from memory in the depths of her mind.  
  
The ghost of the Angel of Music. How odd a thought. Christine had never wanted to know if her Angel had lived, he had said he would not without her. L'Epoque said he hadn't, though how they would have known was beyond her. She hadn't kept her promise to go back and find out, though: Raoul refused to let her. But his voice, that angelic voice that had been both his blessing to her and God's curse to him, it stayed with her.  
  
She remembered the ineffable tenderness with which he had sung to her in that last night of surreal serenity. Erik's song of the "Music of the Night." She could still hear it weaving through her dreams sometimes. The lyrics, so sweet and piercing and full of desires hinted at but left unspoken, they were seared into her mind.  
  
"Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation... Darkness wakes and stirs imagination... "Silently the senses abandon their defenses, helpless to resist the notes I write," she sang without knowing why. "For I compose the music of the night."  
  
The Vicomtess' mind went to work analyzing what the lyrics meant. In the social circles of Paris, not unlike the Paris Opera House itself, what was left unsaid could be as dangerous as what was spoken openly and lies abounded in every platitude. She had gotten plenty of practice in the last year since her near-scandal of a marriage to the new Comte de Chagny in reading between the lines and had become a rather skilled politician herself, as far as Raoul and society allowed.  
  
So what did that mean, "the music of the night"? Did he mean the haunting strains of sound that flowed from beneath his hands when he played, from within his chest when he sang in that blessedly, cursedly beautiful voice of his? Of course, but that was not all. Did he mean the sounds of crickets chirping around her beneath the full moon? Surely not. Did he perhaps mean the sounds of passion that her body had elicited from Raoul when he... Christine was certain, as she always had been, that Erik chose his words carefully, forever guarding his tongue, wrapping every word in as many layers of meaning as he could, saying as much as possible in the few words he used. So often, she hadn't known what he was talking about because his unconscious body language didn't fit with the words she was hearing...  
  
No, it did fit, it always fit. It fit the interpretation he truly meant, not the veil that he laid over that meaning to shield her innocence! The implications of how deeply he cared for her were stunning.  
  
But what was the meaning that he truly meant?  
  
"The darkness..." He had a decidedly dark side, that had been clear in his masterwork, so full of underlying rage and passion and grief, moving as she had never been moved by music before or since. "Hard as lightning" it was indeed: sometimes crashing and discordant, sometimes mincing and subtle, but never was it soft. Surely a composer of his caliber genius would understand how hard "Don Juan" was all the way through: it was an iron bar that was sometimes laid over with a thin sheet of silk. More often than not a bedsheet. Smooth and delicate at times, but never, ever could it be considered "soft as candlelight."  
  
It made no sense, when compared to the next line. dare she trust the music of the night?  
  
"For I compose the music of the night." There was more to that than she was hearing, she knew, for that phrase or a variation on it was repeated throughout the song. Somewhere in there lay her answer. The darkness, the power.  
  
"Close your eyes, for your eyes will only tell the truth..." And what an awful truth they had told her only the next morning, revealing the ravaged horror that was Erik's face beneath the mask! Indeed she hadn't wanted to see it at all, but to forget it as soon as possible! It was not that he meant to lie to her, then, it was that he felt she could not accept his true appearance... and oh, God, he was right! "In the dark, it is easy to pretend that the truth is what it ought to be." Erik had been telling her that he would show himself when he was ready to, asking her to pretend for his sake and hers that he was somehow handsome...  
  
No. There was definitely more to this than she was hearing. She needed to start from the beginning.  
  
He had brought her, he said, to the seat of sweet Music's throne, to this kingdom where all must pay homage to Music... And there was indeed a throne in his living room, a massive, heavy black thing where her duplicate mannequin had sat... but it was evidently his own chair.  
  
Music's throne...  
  
She paid no heed to the tears that dropped silently into her lap. Dare she trust the music of the night, indeed! For the Music of the Night was not only the cry of passion, the sound of seduction. It was far more than the singing of the crickets. It was greater even than the notes so cunningly wrought by the man's hands from the instruments that to him were almost toys.  
  
The Music of the Night, as hard as lightning and soft as candlelight, was no more and no less than Erik himself!  
  
"Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in..."  
  
Again she heard the song that he had played for her: Erik's music softly, deftly wrapped around her mind and again she saw him sitting at his piano, singing to her. But this time she heard the words that those strange eyes of his spoke silently.  
  
"Open up your mind" - and see past the veils I lay over my words to the man within, hear what I'm truly asking and not what you want me to say!  
  
"Let your fantasies unwind" - pretend whatever you wish but please do not reject me for my face, do not misunderstand me!  
  
"In this darkness which you know you cannot fight... the darkness of the music of the night." - Yes, I am a mystery, I will remain an enigma to you always, but do not let that scare you...  
  
"Close your eyes and let music set you free! Only then can you belong to me..."  
  
In her mind, Erik stood from his piano and walked toward her. Candles burned all around in their silver holders. When he was close enough that she could see the gleam of candlelight reflected in his eyes, he removed his mask. It was as awful as she remembered, and yet she could not remember why she had been so frightened. In that moment, his carefully guarded expressions and tense, graceful movements, his veiled words and soulful eyes and fierce, jealous passions were all laid bare for her. Erik's heart was an open book, and her shoulders shook with weeping as the realization hit home.  
  
"Does this face still hold no horror for you?" he asked. She could not answer, but rushed to him the rest of the way, threw her arms around him, buried her face in the pristine white linen of his formal white shirt. Cautiously his own arms came up around her.  
  
"I'm sorry, Erik. I didn't understand, not until now," she sobbed. "'Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing,' she saw only what she wanted to, heard only what she wanted to. Oh, Erik... I am so sorry..."  
  
"Hush, child," he whispered. "I know. You understand now."  
  
"If I'd understood then I -"  
  
"Might still have married the young Count," he finished for her. One hand, as cold as she had ever known it, touched her cheek and caressed it, wiped away the tears when Christine raised her face out of his chest. "What will be is never set in stone, and changing one thing, however important, might not always change the entire outcome. Hush," he added, covering her lips with one finger as she started to interrupt. "I love you, Christine. I know why you married him, and I have always wished you well. I never stopped loving you."  
  
Slowly, he released her and took a few steps back. To Christine's eyes he seemed to glow from the inside out and for a moment he was too bright for her mind's eye to see. When she could see him again, he had changed completely.  
  
His formal suit, always stark and unrelieved black before, was now pure white, whiter than fresh driven snow and trimmed in narrow bands of black. Wings, fluttering slowly just a little bit, hung behind him from just above his jet hair to just above the Persian rugs underfoot: iridescent black feathers were liberally and randomly interspersed with the cobalt feathers that made up most of the span. He still held his porcelain mask in hand, but the change on his face was the greatest of all.  
  
He was healed.  
  
Christine's eyes stung anew and her mouth dropped open in awe. "Angel of Music," she whispered. Erik smiled fully, the expression so strange to see across his newly symmetrical face.  
  
"Thank you, Christine."  
  
"How..."  
  
"You healed me, Christine, when you cried with me and kissed me." Hesitantly he approached her again and when she showed no signs of falling back, took her hand. "I can still be your Angel of Music, Christine, and your guide and guardian. Listen to your heart, I speak to you always from within."  
  
"Stay with me, strange Angel," she murmured. Erik's eyes lit up again and delicately he kissed her forehead.  
  
"Always, my earth Angel of Music, as long as you'll have me."  
  
Over Erik's shoulder Christine could see two more figures silhouetted in white light against an even brighter white. Both of them bore wings similar to Erik's own: one held a scroll upon which Christine could see music written and his face was filled with wisdom and patience. The other, whom she could not see, held a familiar heavy case in one hand and it felt like she knew him. Erik seemed to sense their presences and turned to face them.  
  
"The one with the scroll is Israfel, the celestial Angel of Music," he advised quietly. "He is my teacher now."  
  
"And the other, who is that?" Christine asked in the same low tone. "He looks familiar."  
  
Erik laughed, his rich tenor voice warm and relaxed. "And well he should. Fare you well, Christine. You will know when I have returned to you."  
  
Her former teacher squeezed the singer's hand lightly once more and turned, his iridescent wings shimmering and partially hiding him from view. When he reached Israfel, both turned and vanished. The third figure turned to go as well, but looked back over his shoulder, hefting the violin case in one hand.  
  
"I always knew you'd do well," Stephen Daae's bass voice rumbled. "We're always with you. Take care, Little Lotte."  
  
"Goodbye, Papa," Christine said softly. "I love you... and thank you. Thank you for everything."  
  
~*~  
  
Christine awoke to a rough hand shaking her. "Christine, my God, what are you doing here? And in your nightclothes! Come back to bed."  
  
The full moon, high in the sky when Christine had come to the grave of her father, was now low and pale in the western sky as dawn began to light the east. The young woman looked up from where she knelt into the concerned blue eyes of her husband.  
  
"I'm all right, Raoul. I was just putting to rest a few ghosts."  
  
"You chose a marvelous way to do it," he grumbled in return. "Are they sleeping now?"  
  
The Vicomtess only smiled. There would be problems in the future, her marriage to Raoul might not last another year, but Christine felt like she could deal with any problem now that she knew she wasn't alone. And she also knew she was going to resume singing again, regardless of what Raoul said.  
  
Looking back at the grave, it seemed to the young singer that she could see Erik standing there, resplendent in his white formal suit and cobalt wings, looking sadly after her with his angel's face.  
  
// I love you, Erik, // she thought to him and he nodded in response. // I understand now, the gift that you gave me. //  
  
[[ You alone can make your song take flight, ]] she seemed to hear his voice say. [[ It is yours now, the music of the night. ]]  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Feedback? I know this was pure fluff, but I just had to write this. Hope you liked it, but whether you did or not, tell me!!! And if you liked the angelic involvement in this one, go read "Guide and Guardian."  
  
If anyone got the pun, please let me know. It's music-related, of course.  
  
AngelCeleste85 


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